SaskPower has released the monthly data for the carbon capture and storage facility at the Boundary Dam Power Station.
Unit 3 at the Boundary Dam Power Station came back online in early September, and the carbon capture and storage (CSS) facility resumed operations Sept. 5. According to the monthly report, posted on Twitter on Friday morning, Unit 3 was online for 83 per cent of the month, its best showing since April, when it was online for 94.9 per cent of that month.
Unit 3 had been online for the vast majority of the first four months of the year; it had been offline for less than 48 hours from Jan. 1 to April 30. But then it was taken offline in May for scheduled maintenance and upgrades. It had been online for only a short period of time when a severe thunderstorm rolled through the Estevan area June 14, causing significant damage to Unit 3 and interrupting service until September.
When Unit 3 is offline, the CCS facility at Boundary Dam is also non-operational.
“Moving forward, we’ll focus on meeting our daily commitments to off-takers and maintaining emission levels,” SaskPower stated in the monthly report.
Unit 3 was online for 64.5 per cent of the time in the previous 12 months.
An average of about 105 megwatts of power was produced last month, exceeding the 12-month average of 84.1 megawatts.
Boundary Dam also captured a little more than 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) and operated at 58 per cent of its maximum capacity for the month, compared to the 12-month average of about 48 per cent.
The one-day peak for CO2 captured was just shy of 2,500 tonnes.
Since Unit 3 came online in October 2014, a total of 2,246,744 tonnes of CO2 have been captured. This year has seen 407,410 tonnes captured.
